Letters to the Editor

February 11, 2008

Diocese’s ‘company union’ would be a giant step backward

In the years before strong labor laws were enacted to protect the rights of workers, employers sought to derail newly formed labor organizations by creating company unions. In the coal fields and the steel mills, employers used every unscrupulous means at their disposal to fight the labor unions that sought fair wages and working conditions for their members and, instead, to foist upon workers what was best for the employer.

In 1934, Sen. Robert Wagner stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate to introduce the National Labor Relations Act. In light of the present actions of the bishop of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, Senator Wagner’s words are as important today as they were more than 70 years ago:

“The greatest obstacles to collective bargaining are employer-dominated unions … Such a union makes a sham of equal bargaining power … it deprives workers of the wider cooperation which is necessary to … cope with the sweatshop and the exploiter and to exercise their proper voice in economic affairs.

“Under the employer-dominated union, the worker who cannot select an outside representative to bargain for him suffers from two fatal handicaps. In the first place he has only slight knowledge of the labor market … secondly, only representatives who are not subservient to the employer with whom they deal can act freely in the interest of employees.”

Unfortunately, the exploiter of the worker has returned – this time under the guise of a paternalistic bishop and his hand-picked regional school boards in the Diocese of Scranton. Rejecting over a century of Catholic teaching that champions unionizing and collective bargaining as the rights of the worker, the Diocese of Scranton has returned to the 1930s to impose a company union on teachers who have freely chosen their own representative to speak on their behalf and to bargain for fair wages and working conditions.

Don’t be fooled by the paternalistic face and carefully crafted words put on this sham by the Diocese of Scranton. Even though employees of Catholic elementary and secondary schools have been barred from using the National Labor Relations Act, they are covered by the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, and this church law exhorts the employer church “to observe meticulously the civil laws pertaining to labor and social policy according to Church principles in the employment of workers.”

Imposing a company union on the teachers and staff employed in the Catholic schools in the diocese puts teachers and other lay employees right where workers were in 1934 – with no rights and no recourse.

For 24 years, the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers has done an exemplary job representing its teachers while recognizing the unique role of the Catholic School and the challenges to funding those schools. There is no reason for any employer to believe that SDACT would not continue in that role. The Diocese of Scranton, without negotiation or even consultation, has, by decree, informed its workers in the schools that “Father knows best.”

In accordance with Catholic social teaching, Bishop Martino, put the issue to a vote.

Let those whose lives will be affected decide for themselves whether they want a company union where all decisions concerning salary, fringe benefits and job protection will be imposed unilaterally on the employees by their employer …

Or, the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers, an organization that has worked consistently and conscientiously for almost a quarter of a century to ensure that teachers have an equal voice in the issues that affect their wages, working conditions, due process and job security.

Rita C. Schwartz President National Association of Catholic School Teachers Philadelphia

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